Destiny 2The planned Cosmodrome expansion will not go ahead, the studio told fans in its weekly blog post on Thursday. Instead, Bungie will focus on new projects.
Last year, Bungie said that Destiny 2The new Season of the Chosen would bring back two old Strikes from the original Destiny and expand the Cosmodrome site to “approx Destiny 1 Year 1 parity. “But when players logged in for the new season on Tuesday morning, they found Old Russia unchanged.
The Devil’s Lair Strike made its return – although it is currently not selectable on the map, only available through the Nightfall – but the Fallen SABER Strike was not available and the Cosmodrome was still the same size as last season. Bungie clarified that The Devil’s Lair will be a regular Strike playlist next week, and that Fallen SABER is currently disabled due to a bug.
But even with the Strikes in place, that didn’t explain the missing parts of the Cosmodrome. Bungie’s promise to expand the destination dates back to June 2020, in the first post describing the Destiny Content Vault, a new system that allows the studio to cycle content in and out of the game. Two days after the launch of Season of the Chosen, the studio finally said why the Cosmodrome hadn’t changed.
“When we first shared our plans, we were still early in development and were unsure how far we would go with the Cosmodrome vault,” Bungie said, referring to the initial June announcement. The studio said as the November release of the Beyond light expansion, it had to decide whether to continue to devote time and resources to returning the Cosmodrome to its original splendor of Destiny or shift to developing new content for the future of Destiny 2
With the recurring strikes done and the new player experience already in place, the team decided to move on.
“Since we thought we had achieved our original goals and were aware of the community and the team’s desire for new content, we chose the latter option,” said Bungie. “But when we made that decision, we didn’t correctly update your expectations for how extensively the Cosmodrome experience would be, and that was a mistake.”
With the Destiny Content Vault, there is a chance that Bungie could expand the Cosmodrome sometime in the future by adding the missing locations or the Plaguelands area – introduced in the original Destiny‘s Rise of Iron expansion – but the studio said it has no further plans for the venue at this point.
The Cosmodrome was the first place players set foot on when Bungie launched the original Destiny in 2014. The studio brought about half of the location’s original map to Destiny 2 last fall with Beyond light, and posted a new questline there to help acclimate new Guardians to the sequel.